Yesterday, movers brought my mother and father’s dresser to my house.
They placed it in my bedroom.
I sank onto the bed. It felt so heavy, so parental, so not mine.
Putting some of my clothes into it later, I half flinched, half welcomed the sound of the drawer opening and closing, the hinges on the little doors in the middle of the piece emitting their childhood encrusted echo.
It already feels like mine. Yet not mine. Or is it a new me?
2 responses so far ↓
1 karleary Dec 11, 2006
Oh Jen,
I so know how you feel. I just went through my mother’s christmas decorations. My father didn’t want any. So I’m sifting through the ornaments, making my daughters share fairly, wondering if my dad’s just trying to erase her from his mind (although the wine doesn’t seem to do anything to ease his sorrow, as he still cries about her, even though he’ll be married soon).
Isn’t it funny that when you are little you want to grow up to have a wonderful piece of (furniture, jewelry, art) that is your moms, but you don’t realize the steep price you may have to pay to get it?
Hang in there,
Karen
2 deb Dec 13, 2006
I just read Karleary’s comment and it sounded like me! My dad just had us girls go through our mom’s (who died in Jan) Christmas decorations! I took the Nativity for my eldest daughter.
Iam enclosing a poem I wrote about “inheriting” our mom’s things.
My sister wants to
smash the antique casserole
against the living room wall.
Wants to scream when
the pretty dish laced with pink rose brambles
shatters into a million china petals.
It’s elegant handles protected
by mom’s quilted covers on each end,
the last of Grandma’s Sunday Best.
She wasn’t supposed to inherit
for at least twenty more years.
‘Til Mom was ninety something,
delicate, frail,
shuffling in her terry slippers,
behind a walker,
in some future nameless nursing home.